Upside Down and Inside Out

UPSIDE DOWN AND INSIDE OUT: From The Province Of The Cat by George Gunn

“The more I see, the less I know for sure.” So says the character Ulrich, from Robert Musil’s innovative novel “The Man Without Qualities” (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), a vast thousand page, three volume epic about the last days of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, unfinished at Musil’s death in 1942. At the novels narrative heart is an on-going debate about the values of truth and opinion and how society organizes ideas about life and society. Every time I see Keir Starmer on TV I think about Ulrich and Musil’s novel because, like Starmer, it is neither tragic or comic. Ulrich was a mathematician but lost his faith in science and became a chronicler of Kakania, the failing Empire. Starmer was a Public Prosecutor who, somehow, found himself as Prime Minister of Ukania, the un-constituted state. Ulrich’s great revelation, one of many, is that the aristocrats who administer Kakania have absolutely no idea of what is going on. How the Empire actually works is a mystery to them. Just like the civil servants in Ukanian Treasury. This, in Ulrich’s logic, makes them criminals, because as he says,

“For it is only criminals who presume to damage other people nowadays without the aid of philosophy.”

In Starmer’s case the damage is being done to “other people” by a politician who has no politics. There are other aspects to Starmer which reminds me of Ulrich. For example, does “Sir” Keir Starmer really know who he is? Ulrich doesn’t. Is Starmer a hostage or a sausage? Is he the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition? In recent weeks – and at different times – he appears to have forgotten. For example, in Rishi Sunak’s last appearance as leader of the Opposition at Prime Minister’s Questions Starmer called Sunak “the Prime Minister” at least three times. It’s as if he is struggling with something unknowable, or  as Musil writes of Ulrich, he is

“Slowed down by a sense of hopelessness in all his decisions and movements, he suffered from bitter sadness, and his incapacity solidified into a pain that often sat like a nosebleed behind his forehead the moment he tried to make up his mind to do something.”

Musil’s gift as a writer is that he reminds us that the difference between a normal person and an insane one is that the normal person has all the diseases of the mind, while the madman has only one. So in Starmer’s world everything is upside down and inside out. All his promises mean nothing. What he says has no resonance. He believes in things “passionately” only to abandon them if they do not suit the mood of the moment; which proves that he believes in nothing. The press and media were briefed to declare the first Labour Budget as a “radical” departure for the Ukanian government, when in fact nothing changed at all: the rich are still rich and the poor still poor. It certainly was an expression of governance, but that did not come from the government but from their paymasters, sponsors and donors where the real governance resides. Innocent people continue to die daily in Gaza and Lebanon, but Starmer stays shtum about the genocide – except to say it is not genocide. In is out and up is down. 

The Home Secretary says that it is not her responsibility to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza, even though last Thursday the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for both. The court’s member countries, including Ukania, have signed a treaty that obliges them to act on arrest warrants. A Downing Street spokesman refused to comment on the specific case but said the government would fulfil its “legal obligations”. So will they or won’t they? Is it up or down? Inside or out? 

What Starmer craves is power and what he respects is force. That is why he is a US lapdog and a Zionist apologist. Most people are convinced by experience – even if it is “The more I see, the less I know for sure” variety – and are alienated by authority. Power makes us slaves to ourselves. Force loots our soul. Force, ultimately, wants everything and the violence which it brings obliterates anybody who feels its touch. In relation to force the human spirit is blinded by the very thing it imagined it could handle. Just as German aristocrats thought they could handle Hitler. Just as the US establishment thinks it can handle Trump. In the end humanity is deformed by the violence and weight of the power it submits to and is swept away by the Angel of History – blown backwards into the future, followed by the debris of hubris and misunderstanding. 

In her essay of 1940, “The Iliad, the Poem of Force”, the French philosopher Simone Weil has this, 

“To define force — it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all… The strong are, as a matter of fact, never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak, but neither is aware of this.”

One minute Starmer is here. The next  minute there is nobody here at all. No matter how hard the mainstream media try to hide the grim reality of Gaza and the criminal violence of the IDF, the bloody spectacle of this tragic genocide, thanks to alternative media and citizen journalists on the internet, is shown to us absolutely undiluted. No matter the sane-washing of Donald Trump during his Presidential election campaign and afterwards, by journalists and media pundits, it was apparent for those with eyes to see that there is no comforting fiction available to placate the horror. The more Trump blathered his vile tangentialitis on TV the more it was apparent that this was the most powerful country in the world, with the greatest application of force at its disposal, the “world’s policeman”, decomposing before the audience of the world. Now that Trump has been re-elected all the horror and all the force that goes with it will be unleashed. Those who stand in Trump’s way will become “things”, as Simone Weil described. What more damage to the world can Trump and his force do, that has not already been done, remains to be seen.

In so-called safe so-called democracies – the US? Ukania? Kakania? – the tendency is to overestimate the stability of the state and the functioning society they enjoy. All too often, due to unforeseen events, natural disasters or gradual and systemic decay caused by internal social tensions, corruption and economic inequality, the pressures become too great and the system falls apart. 

With war spreading in Ukraine and the Middle East (and many other places), as environmental protection gets increasingly greenwashed – as at COP29 – and the prevailing global political climate becoming more reactionary by the day, the thing to do is to look locally for some solace, for some answers. Isn’t it? Surely in Scotland up does not mean down and in does not mean out? If I thought that crazy thing yesterday I do not need to think it today. It is still possible to think like that in Scotland, isn’t it? There is space and time within these cities, villages, islands, hills and glens to re-calibrate your sanity. Isn’t there?

But if you look closely at the political landscape as opposed to the physical one what you see is that the SNP, instead of formulating an exciting, inclusive and forward thinking politics that can sell a vision of Scotland to her people, have hunkered down after the last General Election, obsessed by polls and getting into Unionist trap-arguments that are designed to shut the democratic door. The future is there to be won but you wouldn’t get that impression from the Scottish Government or the rest of the schizophrenics, reality deniers and generally indolent, self-serving loafers who hang around Parliament, disguised as MSP’s and who contribute absolutely nothing to the cause of the people.

Neal Ascherson in a recent article (Sunday National 24.11.24) has some useful things to say about this “theatre of despair”, as he calls it. Ascherson is an eternal optimist – and the gods bless him for that – who believes “the tide will eventually turn”. He asks us to imagine a near future where a energetic and confident Scottish government will be navigating the country to independence. This government should act “As if” Scotland were already independent. He suggests that this government will adopt a strategy of “institutional disobedience”.  He goes on,

“This is not the same as ‘civil’ disobedience, which so many of us in Scotland practised when we refused to play the poll tax… (It) means a strategy of calm but firm confrontation, on battlefields chosen by Scottish authorities and on policies clearly attractive to the public… The Unionist media gloats on that everything optimistic – independence, honest government, better health and social care, a growing economy – is as dead as yesterday. Petty malevolence replaces steady hope. But a longer view of Scotland shows tidal rhythms, each return of political energy higher than the last.”

Neal Ascherson begins his article by looking back to 1979 and the rigged referendum for a Scottish Assembly, which was followed by a General Election which saw Labour defeated, the SNP almost wiped out and Margaret Thatcher and her new Tory gang elected. I was twenty three years old then, but it was the beginning of my political consciousness awakening and was the focus for my future creative life. Everything I wrote, everything I did, (I was convinced) was to release Scotland from the destructive, deadening, extractive embrace of Thatcher’s Tory Ukania. I was not alone. In the 35 years from 1979 to 2014 there was literally an explosion in Scottish culture and in the arts. It was primarily the writers – the poets, playwrights and novelists – who kept the flame of “steady hope” alive. They galvanised the desire of the Scottish people, showing them through their work, that a better Scotland was possible. Their work was powerful because it was available. The Tory government of the time, through the Scottish Arts Council, tried to keep a lid on this creative energy, but of course that was impossible. As Iris Murdoch once observed, “Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify.”

Poets change nothing on their own, but I believe from 1979 onwards they did affect politics during those dreich years by their extraordinary and infectious energy and by holding open the imaginative space where people could dream of the possibilities of Scotland, in a language which resonated with the people. What this did was to generate a different understanding of reality – political, social, economic. Into this imaginative space, this understanding, the idea of a confident, independent Scotland could enter. 

In the 10 years since 2014 it has been more difficult. The cultural energy has dissipated. The means of production has become ever more problematic to realise. Writer’s now are more concerned with “self” and “psychology”. The search for the inner world has replaced the struggle for political and social freedom. The internet has replaced the pamphlet. Creativity and the energy of anger has drowned in the swamp of social media and anonymity. Few people are keen to put their name to anything. Fear and ego has done for altruism and the common cause. But things will change, and for the better. The political “tidal rhythms” Neal Ascherson was talking about will come into being once again. Compassion and connection will prevail if humanity is to survive. It may feel we are at the worst moment in human history because the moment is now. There will be worse moments to come, that is certain. Poetry could become the only means, literally, of survival. Truth will be our life-raft. For example, in October of this year it was reported by the Centre for European Reform that leaving the EU will cost Ukania an additional £311 billion by 2035. That is the “black hole” Rachel Reeves was less than honest about. 

The leaders of Ukania will not face reality because they do not know what it is. It is the people of Scotland who are paying the price for that. As Robert Musil wrote in “A Man Without Qualities”, “If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.” The art of what is possible will be the basis for the politics of the future. Upside down or inside out, we will get there. We have to.  

©George Gunn 2024.